The Schrödinger picture is under new management.
Physicists are people, just like you. They have the same flaws. So let's ask, are physicists really selflessly exploring the fundamental structure of the universe? Or are they just looking out for themselves?

Sunday, 21 December 2008

No deviation from the SM in diboson (WZ or ZZ) production. These investigations are important as they're sensitive to trilinear gauge boson couplings which are a direct consequence of the SM's SU(2) x U(1) gauge group. If there is something else going on, it might be seen here. 5.7\sigma significance.

Theory says that a CP violating phase \beta_s measured in B_s->J\psi\psi should be very small -- it can be measured at the LHC, but it's too small to be seen by the Tevatron -- unless there is some new physics going on. And indeed, the Tevatron seems to see something. This is early data, so will be watched closely.

Still no concensus on whether theCDF results indicate new physics or a miscalculated background.

LHC Prospects -- Dave Charlton

This was depressing. I have three words written down on my pad:

"LHC: is fucked"

The machine will be cooled back down in Jult 2009. So you can kiss goodbye to any really interesting physics until 2010, I guess.

Harmony of Scattering Amplitudes: From QCD to Gravity -- Zvi Bern

Oh my word, this is an outttrraggeee.

After the three year old \cite{Bern, Kosower} introduction to MHV amplitudes \cite{Bern, Kosower} during which the word "harmony" was thrown about almost enough to make me vomit bile over the sleeping head of the chap in front, Bern spent his hour glorifying and citing himself and Kosower \cite{Bern, Kosower}. I actually don't care if what they're going is important, but I hate the approach -- consider some subset of loop diagrams which are "cut constructable", or otherwise handy to play with, do all your work on those and then claim that it applies to the whole theory. Oh shut up. This ad hoc approach yields a shed load of results, certainly, \cite{Bern, Kosower}, but it's never going to give you a genuine undersanding of the whole theory, despite what Bern claims. \cite\cite\cite\cite{Bern, Kosower}.

And, not once, not even god damned once, did Bern mention any of the work done by either the Durham or Southampton groups. Hello? Hello, Bern? You're at the UK theory meeting and you don't mention the papers of two of the larger groups in the country? Your arrogance appalls. Are you going to mention any UK contributions? Oh, the London guys. They get a nod at one point. Not even a mention of the seminal paper by Mansfield, who is at Durham and was sat in the bloody audience! Perhaps the citation count on that paper isn't high enough. That's what matters, after all, not content. Not like Bern and Kosower's papers. Oh no. They have big \cite{Bern, Kosower}, sorry, very big citation counts.